


Reverse Cut

by Josephinemarche (Amodelofefficiency)



Category: Classic Alice (Web Series)
Genre: Andrew thinks in terms of camera angles and lighting, F/M, Pre-Series, mid-series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 08:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2574407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amodelofefficiency/pseuds/Josephinemarche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew shoots amateur gigs on campus on weeknights, drunken games of Cards Against Humanity with friends for blackmail, and time lapses of students milling around the quadrangle while avoiding class. At first Alice weaves in and out of his videos like anyone else, but then he gets caught watching her laugh in a pub in Boston and suddenly it’s a year later and she’s everywhere; he realizes one night he now has three separate videos of Alice sorting through Shakespeare’s sonnets, not to mention the time she’d started her own dramatic retelling of King Lear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverse Cut

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually about five different stories that I've started over the last few weeks and eventually managed to fit together. It was inspired by the preview videos and the realization that Andrew has a lot of footage of Alice on his computer, and then it snowballed into lots of introspection and basically Andrew being knocked over by feels. All the random film studies quirks are things I've noticed at University over the last few years - the documentary/film about bird watchers, the bread documentary (a personal favourite of mine) and the strange people throwing odd camera angles and cuts into films just to see what the teachers say. Film students are weird. I can't explain it. I figured Andrew was definitely just as weird as the rest of us. 
> 
> Reverse cutting/crossing the line [what ever you want to call it] is basically when sequential shots are suddenly taken from different angles that disrupt the spatial relationship between characters/objects. Character A goes from being on Character B's right to their left without either of them actually moving and then the audience suddenly is all WTF GUYS WHAT DID I MISS? Most of the time it's a bad idea because it's just plain confusing, but it can be used effectively when you know you're doing it. [Sorry for the terrible explanation. Google it. Google is your friend]
> 
> This is split into two parts - the second part I will attempt to finish by tomorrow night but it's actually more likely that it will come some time in the next few days. I'm quite busy tomorrow with my own studies. I hope you guys enjoy! 
> 
> (also shoutout to Beka for counselling me through the freakout I had about midway through this, when I suddenly decided that it was utter rubbish and made absolutely no sense)

 

* * *

 

“Do you know what a reverse cut is?” he asks.

They’ve known each other just over a year and her head tucked close to the curve of his forearm has his senses on fire.

“Some film term? Something about crossing lines?” she murmurs, “you’re not supposed to do it. I know that much.”

On screen Alison Doody steps beyond the seal and the temple starts to tremble around her forebodingly. The grail falls from her fingertips and Alice draws a quick breath.

 _The line exists for a reason_ , he thinks.

Ignores the urge thrumming through his fingers to wrap the blanket further around her shoulders and hold her close.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t mean to start filming her.

They’re at a pub in Boston one weekend a short time later and Alice bets him five dollars he can’t balance a spoon on the end of his nose. He loses within seconds and her victory laugh rings through the shouts for beer. His phone is in hand before he can think about it, framing her lopsided smile as her fingers tipsily reach to bat at his hand. 

“Stop, asshole! I look like a mess,” she complains, “And I’ve only had one drink! Look, see!” she sings at the camera, dangling her glass before it comically.

The two beers that are beginning to tingle down her spine have her fluid and relaxed, but all Andrew can see is the blush in her cheeks and the deep mahogany of the wooden panels behind her head and the way she leans back into the wall like she’s melting. The pub is rowdy with shouts and jeers at the game on television, the steady clink of cutlery and the pungent smell of liquor soaked into the tables. Alice snatches at his phone but Andrew drops it to his lap before she can reach it, laughing as she protests.

“Why were you filming me?” she demands finally, voice dipping somewhere between curiosity and petulance.

He almost considers telling her the truth, but finds he doesn’t yet have words to explain it, whatever it is.

“You have ketchup all down your chin,” he tells her instead, and her startled movements to wipe the imaginary condiment from her face almost make up for the strange seasick feeling settling in his stomach.

 

* * *

 

 

There are rules in filmmaking about crossing lines.

Andrew can remember the first time a university professor dragged two unwilling students up the front of the class, positioning them to face each other and explaining how their "spatial relationship" had to adhere to the "axis" or the entire scene could be lost.

"The line assures us of reality," the professor had declared, “When you mess with it, everything on screen becomes disorientated – your audience suddenly feels that nothing is right.”

Andrew _had_ been listening, and then he stopped listening, and instead watched as his pencil had rolled from the middle of his notepad to the edge of his desk, threatening to overbalance and tip. He’d written four words on the notepad _– don’t cross the line_ – and drawn a big red circle around the idea in case he ever forgot; other than that he’d spent the lecture scrolling through twitter, waiting for his roommate to report back on the best places around campus to eat.  

Rules have always been something hazy and optional in his opinion, and the very first rule of anything is to occasionally consider tossing them all. In his second year he’d thrown reverse cuts into a five minute short film just to see what might happen, and his lecturer had all but thrown his arms up in despair, asking him to explain why he thought it was necessary to alienate his audience in a film about bird watchers.

“You just hate rules, don’t you?” Alice had asked, suppressing a laugh, and Andrew had thrown the piece of paper with the lecturer’s comments at her as she’d headed towards the library. 

“Stanley Kubrick did it!” he’d finally yelled in his own defense, but she’d already been lost from sight.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s a film major, he tells himself.

Recording everyday life is normal and expected.

In the same way that Alice always has at least two different books on hand Andrew always has access to some type of camera. Without it he runs the risk of missing something spectacular; his fingers start to itch and he overanalyzes every minute. Cara tells him he’s ridiculous when one afternoon the sun sets at a certain angle across the quad and he spends ten minutes angered that he can’t capture the array of hues. “It happens every day,” she shrugs, and Andrew’s hands fly with unusual zeal as he tries to express how it really _doesn’t._  

He likes the way the world makes a little more sense when he’s filming. There’s something irresistible about capturing life on screen, viewing the world in various camera angles and shades of good and bad lighting. It’s been built into him ever since his kindergarten teacher advised his parents he desperately needed some focus and his mother took that to mean he needed to learn how to balance a second-hand Polaroid between his small hands.  Within a week he’d blazed through photographing every Hot Wheels car he owned, and then had been startled to discover there was no more film when he wanted more.

Almost twenty years later and he still spends time photographing cars, only now they’re bigger and he occasionally gets to drive them and he doesn’t have to worry about his camera running out.

He shoots amateur gigs on campus on weeknights, drunken games of Cards Against Humanity with friends for blackmail, and time lapses of students milling around the quadrangle while avoiding class. At first Alice weaves in and out of his videos like anyone else, but then he gets caught watching her laugh in a pub in Boston and suddenly it’s a year later and she’s everywhere; he realizes one night he now has three separate videos of Alice sorting through Shakespeare’s sonnets, not to mention the time she’d started her own dramatic retelling of _King Lear._

If their relationship were on an axis then it would never swing further than 180 degrees. On the side they inhabit is their friendship, defined by a shared love of storytelling, stupid banter and something unknown that leaves them comfortable in both silence and roaring loud debate; quiet moments of study in the corner of the library, Alice with her mind running through five realities and Andrew scratching out treatments and pestering her to talk, and evenings when only the most obnoxious laughter is acceptable and they end up throwing popcorn at screenings of bad movies or bumping up against each other in the crush of people listening to Cara DJ at the campus bar.

There’s something between them. Andrew can feel it nudging at the surface late at night when Alice falls asleep midway through movies, or when Cara squashes them in around booths in the cafeteria and Alice’s leg is suddenly pressed against his own. It’s something tangible; something physical between them that knocks his breath sideways and reminds him why lines exist in the first place. Because crossing them for the sake of experimenting, to test just how far their physical response goes, couldn’t ever be worth it in the long run. To swing around the unknown way would be to redefine their entire relationship. It would disorientate them completely; upset the foundations they’ve been building for three years.

So he tells himself that it’s just physical  - chemistry and other formulae he never paid enough attention to in high school. He ignores that sometimes his fingers arch towards Alice’s own; ensures he forgets that strange seasick feeling from the pub. Doesn’t think too much of the time he spends around her, even when it’s late and Cara is eyeing him knowingly because it’s the third night in a row he’s ended up in their room. Instead he films, and tries to convince himself that she’s an interesting documentary subject.

In a bookstore one afternoon picking second handle novels for some light reading he follows her round and round the dusty shelves while she mutters idly to herself. In classes he catches the side of her face when she glances up sharply, trying to capture the way her eyes squint just slightly whenever she’s momentarily confused. He films her eating in the cafeteria because it annoys her endlessly, sticks the camera in her face mockumentary style as they walk to and from class, and when he’s bored he’ll start narrating her life like she’s a David Attenborough special, zooming in close over her shoulder and whispering nonsense annotations in her ear.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that don’t you?” she asks, and he shrugs and laughs it off and tells her he’s a _film student,_ forever blaming his teachers and imaginary assessment tasks.

He has hard drives full of videos of friends and family gatherings and school projects and concerts, all kept cluttered around the desk in his bedroom amongst cans of coke and stray readings for class. Each folder is organized so that he has some hope of finding them in the future, but he refuses to think about how the one labeled _Alice_ grows exponentially; he barely acknowledges the truth that he enjoys putting her on film more than anyone else. There’s something in the way her passionate nature saturates the screen that reminds him why he’s always been drawn to her.  He likes to annoy her, to poke and prod at the things she enjoys until she’s forced to turn the tables on him. He could make quips about redheads and Irish ancestry, but he thinks it's something inherently Alice. He never wins their debates, but he’s been antagonistic since he was three years old and he doesn’t think he’ll ever grow tired of throwing her curve balls and watching her react.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s known her almost three years when _Classic Alice_ enters their world.

Instead of rolling her eyes and batting her hands at his cell phone, Alice fidgets awkwardly before the camera and keeps meeting his eye instead of staring down the lens. He tries to gently remind her, but there’s something wonderfully candid in the first few videos that he grows to enjoy.

“This is very weird,” she stage whispers.

He refuses to respond. Instead he stares at her pointedly until she sits back and takes a breath.

“This was your idea,” he eventually reminds her, “I was happy just following you around. You’re the one who wanted to turn it into story time.”

“This is not story time,” she retorts, finger pointing at him in spirals. Abruptly she leans towards the camera, “Not that there’s anything wrong with story time. Go find your local library kids.”

He sighs audibly, “Alice, your audience isn’t five.”

When they finally begin she’s hesitant in a way he’s not accustomed to, but then slowly her passionate nature starts to seep through. By the end of the first video she’s exhausted and hungry and Andrew (still confused at the turn the documentary has taken – because of course she’s chosen classic literature. _Of course_ ) waves her onwards and tells her he’ll meet her later. He collapses in front of the camera and can’t help but chuckle. She’s awkward, and sweet, and dorky, and a million other adjectives that he hopes others can see.

If film is supposed to uncover hidden truths, then Alice Rackham keeps unraveling before him, and by week two and three and four he suddenly realizes their lines are becoming crossed.

At three in the morning he’s editing footage and Alice keeps darting around in front of the camera. His eyes are blurry with lack of sleep and too long spent watching a screen, and eventually he has to lean back and stare at the ceiling, groaning loudly. He needs to shower – and wash clothes, and finish his readings for Cutler’s class because he still can’t escape questions during the lecture, and a million other things. His room smells stale and oppressive in a way that only happens after midnight.

Suddenly he’s painfully aware that he can only deny this for so long.  

 

* * *

 

He thinks about telling her.

And then things get worse.

 

* * *

 

**Is she still mad?**

_It’s hard to tell because she won’t refer to you by name. I assume_ he _is still you though?_

**Great. Thanks. Tell her – tell her I said I’m sorry**

_Prichard if you apologize one more time I’m going to physically remove your eyebrows._

 

 

* * *

He spots _Journey Through Bookland_ on a shelf in an antique and second hand bookstore on the outskirts of town. It’s a tiny, narrow store with high ceilings and piles of books stacked to his waist, making the rows almost impossible to navigate without risking them all falling. There’s a cat winding its way under the legs of tables and the entire store feels suspended in time, like it’s sprung from any of the books lying idle. He feels awkwardly tall and out of place among the quiet, terrified that he’ll put his foot on Jane Austen or Poe, but the store is one he’s never noticed before and he doesn’t have to meet his mother for another half hour.

He’s conscious enough of himself to be aware that he misses Alice. He runs a finger down the dust jacket of an ancient looking gardening manual and ducks behind the lampshade at the back of the room to avoid the cat. The novel is nestled among a row of old children’s literature, it’s bindings tattered and slowly coming undone but all the more beautiful for it. He doesn’t question the price tag – doesn’t think through the decision at all - but the book is wrapped carefully and in his possession by the time he and his mother sit down for coffee. Things are understandably shaky at home after the fallout of _Crime & Punishment,_ but his mother is bright and vivacious and kisses him on both cheeks, and if he spends their entire lunch with his left hand resting gently on top of the book cover, she doesn’t think to question it at all. 

 

* * *

 

He wonders sometimes if Alice thinks about it. He can remember wandering aimlessly behind her searching for novels, his cell phone open and trying to capture the strange mix of awe and excitement on her face each time she pulled something new from the shelf. The light in the store had been terrible but Alice had kept whispering to the books like she was waiting for them to respond to her, and it hadn’t been until she’d turned and brushed his chest that he’d realized he’d leant in so close.

“You have issues with personal space, don’t you?”

“You talk to books. Who’s the strange one here?”

“At least the books talk back,” she’d grinned, and ducked beneath his arm to head towards the poetry.

She’d mentioned _Journey Through Bookland_ while gazing longingly at an illustrated edition of _Alice in Wonderland,_  and Andrew had had to steer her away quickly before she added another book to the pile. The five contenders had been spread out on a table near the back of the store and Alice had spent a good fifteen minutes switching between them, finally settling on Dostoyevsky and what he thought might be a book on economic poets.

Later that night she’d knocked her shoulder against his in thanks and then held it there for a long second. He could feel the heavy warmth of her coat through his leather jacket and for a moment had entertained thoughts of taking her hand.  If he had, he wonders where they might be now; thinks of reverse cuts and crossing lines and disorienting the audience - thinks of disorientating himself.

If the first rule of anything is to consider throwing out the rules then perhaps he’s been focused on the wrong way of looking at everything.

That night he sees Cara’s advertisement asking for students, and the following morning he’s at their door.

 


End file.
